


Stripped Bare

by NamelesslyNightlock



Series: Going Down Swinging [19]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Enemies to Lovers, Feels, Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, Loneliness, M/M, Pre-Slash, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 01:29:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20267812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock
Summary: How could being different be a good thing, when it meant that Loki did not have a soulmate?





	Stripped Bare

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt**— _“Please, don’t let me be alone.”_

Prince Loki of Asgard always knew that he was different from everyone else. Every single thing about him was strange, from his tall but thin frame to his shiny dark hair, from the green eyes that shone like jewels to the seiðr that curled through his very soul. He was _different_, and even though his mother always told him that being different was good, he never quite believed it.

Because yes, he was proud of his seiðr, no matter the way that he was mocked for it. And even though he looked a little strange among the tan-skinned, fair-haired, warm-eyed Aesir, he knew that there were those who still found him attractive– at least until they got to know him, and his brash attitude forced them away. And while he was teased for being scholarly and preferring books over swords, he still prided himself on his intelligence. There were so many things about himself that… others may not admire, but which he was glad for regardless. So, yes, he supposed that there were times when he could see what his mother meant—

But how could being different be a good thing, when it meant that he did not have a soulmate?

—

For as long as Loki could remember, his wrist had been entirely bare. He had stared at it for hours as a small child, waiting for something to appear across his blank, creamy skin– because while he might have been too young to entirely understand, he knew enough to _get_ that a soulmate would be like a best, best friend. And that… was something that he wanted more than anything else in the world.

Thor had friends– he had Frandral and Volstagg, and the three of them ran the length of the palace and looked like they were having the best of times. But whenever Loki tried to play, Fandral and Volstagg would accuse him of cheating or of being mean, and then they would push him over or run ahead and leave him behind, and Thor would simply smile and shrug and choose to play with _them_.

And to make matters even more difficult to swallow, Thor did not only have his friends– he had a soulmate as well. Loki had seen Thor’s wrist, had seen the runes curling over his skin.

_Do you think that I cannot beat you just because I am a girl?_

It seemed that Thor would be matched with a lady of fire, someone who could keep up with his thunderous nature. And Loki was happy for his brother, he truly was– but he was upset that Thor seemed to have _everything_, while for Loki, everything just kept going wrong.

It was why he grew mad over the way that Thor hardly looked at his own words, or when he didn’t seem to care whether or not he located the person who would say them. But whenever Loki brought up his concerns, Thor would only dismiss them.

“It’s not like searching will help me find her faster,” Thor had said. “What does it matter?”

It made the anger simmer deep in Loki’s chest, and when the day came that those words were uttered, Loki almost thought he could hear his own heart _crack_.

She was the only girl who had been permitted to train as a warrior, and she had only been allowed because she could already best all of the boys in training, simply from watching and copying the moves that they had learned. Her belief in her own abilities was greater than any attempt to stop her, and when she stated on her very first training session that she would be capable of taking on all of the boys at once, Thor had broken into loud guffaws.

And then, standing there defiantly amongst the much larger boys with her grey eyes sharp and deadly as they landed properly on Thor for the first time, she snapped out those words that both Thor and Loki had been waiting to hear.

“Do you think that I cannot beat you just because I am a girl?”

Thor had found his best friend that day, and he and the Lady Sif had been near inseparable ever since. Oh, Loki doubted that they would end up _together_. After all, soulmates did not always mean that a romantic attachment would be formed– merely that they would be as close as it was possible to be, that they would share a particular connection and, upon meeting, they would feel like a missing piece of themselves had been restored.

Loki tried not to be jealous, but he did not quite succeed. Thor had _everything_, and Loki was forever being left behind.

Frigga saw through his attempts to hide the way that he felt, and she led him into her sitting room after Thor and Sif’s soul match had been announced.

“Oh, Loki,” Frigga whispered, drawing him in for a hug that he gladly accepted. “It does not make a difference that he has found her. He will always be your brother.”

That only made Loki shake harder still, because Frigga did not understand, and there was nothing that she could say to fix the true problem.

Thor finding his soulmate was exciting, but _expected–_ because they all knew that he would. Ever since Prince Thor had been seen wearing a leather vambrace over his left wrist as a small child, the whole Realm had just been waiting, _knowing_ that the moment would come.

But… they did not know that about Loki, because it was more than likely that Loki would have no one to find at all.

And that night, as Loki lay curled up in the middle of his bed, he stared at the bare skin on his wrist with an intense focus, as if he could wish a mark into existence. But a mark could not be formed simply through the force of will_,_ and he could feel the pain of that fact as an ache through his entire body, as if his bones were crying out for the half of his soul that was not there.

“Please,” Loki whispered, his voice breaking as tears began to fall from his eyes to soak into his pillow. “Please, don’t let me be alone.”

—

As Loki grew into the years where he was no longer a child and yet not quite a man, the way that people spoke to him when they noticed his wrist changed. After all, the sight of a child with a bare wrist is not uncommon, because the mark is only visible when both parties live. There is always a fifty per cent chance that a child will be born with a mark, depending on whether they are the older or the younger of a pair.

But as the number of centuries Loki had spent without a mark began to stretch, it seemed impossible that his soulmate had yet to be born, that there would be such a gap between their ages. And if the reason for Loki’s missing mark was not because his match had yet to be born, then…

“The poor prince,” they would whisper, “To have already lost so young.”

“No wonder there is something odd about him– he does not have a soul.”

“It is a pity and a shame.”

Loki didn’t mind those rumours, because he knew that they weren’t true. But he hated the way that they would look at him with sadness, as if they were waiting for him to crumble under the weight of having never met his match.

He told himself that he was stronger than that, that he was never going to crumble because he was more than capable of standing tall on his own. But when he remembered just _why_ they were wrong, when he reminded himself that his mark was not there not because his soulmate had died, but because he likely did not have one at all… then it always became a little harder to bear.

Perhaps he would have been all right if he’d had someone else, _anyone_ else.

Thor didn’t just have Sif, because he still had Fandral and Volstagg– and Hogun as well, now. They were all friends together, and even though only Sif and Thor were matched together among them, they all treated each other as almost an extended family.

Loki, though? He had no one at all, save for his mother and Thor– and they did not entirely count, because no matter how hard they tried, they still could not completely understand him. In fact, none of the Aesir understood Loki, because he was too different, too _strange_.

He supposed that made some level of sense– because how could anyone care for him, if he was too strange for even a soulmate to love?

So while he tried to stay strong and he kept a cool and calm façade fixed in place, there were moments when everything piled too high and he felt the world begin to break apart.

He would curl on his bed and stare at his wrist, not quite able to stop hoping that one day, maybe soon, there would be words written across it in the hand of someone who would love him. Even though he could not truly deny the decision that the Norns had clearly made for him, he still liked to hide within the fantasies of a child.

Some nights, Loki would even let his seiðr dance over his skin, drawing runes and patterns in bright green lines and imagining that they were real. But he always knew that they were not, that there was nothing he could ever do to escape the truth that the years had taught him.

There was no one out there for him, and he would be alone forever.

—

Loki was used to suffering through being called hurtful names. He supposed it was something that any child experiences, although the taunts that were directed at him seemed more targeted, more hurtful.

Liesmith.

Trickster.

Silvertongue.

_Soulless._

While most names he could shrug away, or could even fashion into something to be _proud_ of, it was the last which cut the deepest.

Loki was already mocked for his seiðr, for the way he looked, for the way he won battles, and the way that he liked to spend his free time. He couldn’t do anything about those things – or if he could, he wouldn’t want to – but the last?

His hours of staring at his wrist had taught him that he couldn’t force a mark to appear by simply wishing it, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t etch a mark there at all.

At first, he wondered whether he should put something simple there, something that would easily pass as legitimate. But if he had simply _Your Royal Highness_ or _Prince Loki_ on his wrist, then he knew that he would be constantly worried about saying the wrong thing in return, of accidentally being mistaken as someone else’s soulmate. So, instead, he fashioned something else, something that he knew no one would ever say to him upon a first meeting.

_No, I wanted to talk with you._

When he showed the mark to his mother, she was overjoyed, believing that the other half of his soul had finally been brought into the world. And for a moment, the pride of being able to craft an illusion that even his mother could not see through overwhelmed his guilt for the lie.

From that day on, Loki was almost treated the same as everyone else. It was… easier, at least, because there was one less thing for them to sneer about. Oh, they continued to call him Liesmith, they continued to mock his tricks. But never again was Loki given the title of _soulless_, and that was all that Loki had wanted to achieve.

Because…

Perhaps the reason why that particular taunt had hurt so much was because it was the only one that’s entirely true.

—

When Loki discovered that he was a Frost Giant, it was like Yggdrasil had been caught in a gale, her branches swaying violently and throwing the world out of balance. Everything had been upended, and yet there was one thing that always remained the same.

Loki was still _different_, just as he had always been– and so he knew that in a way, everything was still the same.

He was still a monster. Now, he just had the blue skin to prove it.

There was a moment, when Loki was holding the Casket of Ancient Winters in Odin’s vault, that he almost looked down at his left wrist, wondering if there was anything different when it was painted blue. But then Odin interrupted him, and as he put the Casket down and the blue melted back to its normal (_false_) colour, Loki’s gaze caught on the words he had etched into his wrist himself so many centuries ago.

_No, I wanted to talk with you._

The words he had chosen because he knew that he would never hear them were now even less likely to be said than they had ever been, because who would choose to talk with a creature of their nightmares?

For a moment, Loki considered dispelling it, but he decided that it didn’t matter– because monsters didn’t have souls regardless.

And when he was hanging from the edge of the rainbow bridge only a few days later, he knew that there was nothing to stop him from just letting go. There wasn’t anyone to miss him, there would be no person staring at their bare wrist and aching for a connection that had been lost before it could be made.

—

For a while, Loki’s mind was madness. The remnant horrors of the void and his time with Thanos and the Other was more than enough to send him descending into true insanity– and he very nearly might have, if he hadn’t managed to find a single thing to keep himself sane.

Loki’s plan was simple.

He knew from Thor’s experience that Midgard had some kind of defence, and he knew from his observations through the link to the Tesseract that there was some kind of plan in place to form a team. Convincing Thanos to send _him_ to Earth had been another matter entirely, but he managed it– and even with the connection that the Other had with him through the Mind Stone, Loki knew that he would be able to see his plan through.

After all, Loki only needed to _lose_. He’d had plenty of practice at falling over during the long and hard journey that had been his life, and he knew that in this, at least, he would succeed. And once it was done… well. Loki knew that he would be locked up on Asgard at the very least, but that was surely preferable to spending another moment with Thanos.

Once he had made it to Midgard and he was able to gather further information, his plans morphed into something more solid– and he was able to confirm that the Avengers Initiative he learned about from Agent Barton was surely his best chance for failure.

At least, he thought so, until he met Captain Rogers while aiding Barton in stealing the metal that Selvig needed to create the portal for the Chitauri.

The man was supposedly one of Midgard’s greatest warriors, but if that were true, then there was a chance that Loki was going to have to rethink his strategy. He had meant to allow himself to get captured at this juncture, but to be captured by such incompetence? Well. He might have been planning to lose to mortals, but even he would not allow himself to stoop so low. No one would have believed it, anyway.

Then a red and gold man descended from the sky, knocked him down in a single shot and threatened him with a rather impressive array of weapons– and _then_, the mortal had the gall to make a _jest_.

“Make your move, Reindeer Games.”

It wasn’t hard to fake the scowl that crossed his brow, because he knew what it meant when someone called him such a name even if he didn’t understand the moniker itself. And yet, for a mortal to make a joke and call Loki a name after what he had just seen what Loki was capable of…

Despite the horror of the whole situation he had found himself in, Loki very nearly found that amusing.

—

Loki’s arrest and escape went _almost_ as he had expected it to, with only the addition of Thor to contend with. And really, as much as Loki hated to admit it, Thor was only an added bonus– because with him on their side, the Avengers actually had a chance at winning their fight against the Chitauri army.

He chose Stark Tower purely to make them angry. He knew that he wanted to attack somewhere heavily populated– somewhere that a response would be pulled together swiftly, somewhere that would make it possible for the Avengers to make use of the bottleneck. But he could have done that anywhere in the city– Stark Tower provided a unique opportunity to enrage the one that he _knew_ would make the most difference.

Stark was the Avenger who had impressed him the most thus far– the mortal who had held his own in a bout against _Thor_. So it was that mortal he wanted to speak with, and he waited patiently in the mortal’s own home for a confrontation.

The impressive armour landed on the balcony as Loki watched, and then he followed the mortal inside, smirking at his ability to predict even _this_ mortal’s movements.

“Please tell me you’re going to appeal to my humanity,” he drawled, hoping to engage him in a battle of wits—

But then, Stark _flinched_. He stopped walking, his whole body freezing on the spot as he stared at Loki with wide eyes.

“_What_ did you just say to me?”

Loki frowned in irritation. “Surely you heard me, Stark,” he said. “Do not make me repeat myself– I expected more than this from you.”

There was a moment where Stark looked confused, but then– his mask hardened.

“I’m not here to make an appeal,” Stark said, his voice a little harsher than it had been before. “I’m here to make a _threat_.”

It seemed that his odd moment of uncertainty had been just that, for the following conversation went exactly as Loki had predicted it would. They argued, they exchanged barbs which, on Loki’s side, contained information that he hoped the inventor would notice– and then he’d given Stark a way out of the conversation and a way to join the fight in a manner that he was quite sure the mortal would _not_ notice.

Everything went exactly to plan, and Loki smirked as he made his way back to the balcony to watch the battle progress. The mortal would play his part, Loki was sure of that. There was little more that he could do now, other than hope that all of his carefully placed pieces would fall where they were supposed to.

And yet… despite the success of the conversation, Loki couldn’t shake away the curious memory of how Stark had looked at Loki as if he had been betrayed.

—

Being smashed into the ground by the Hulk had certainly not been part of Loki’s plan, but when the opportunity to shake loose the Other’s connection with Loki’s mind had presented itself, Loki simply could not allow it to go to waste. Especially since, with that connection gone, he would not need to allow himself to be captured and imprisoned– he could escape and hide himself without worry of the Other being able to track him down.

A few injuries at the hands of the Hulk were worth far less than that– however, he had not expected it to hurt quite as much as it did.

He’d known worse pain of course, had suffered so much more than anyone else could comprehend during his time with Thanos. But a cracked spine takes time to heal, and he had not recovered enough to get away before the Avengers arrived back on the scene.

And, well. Loki had seen the mortals joke when they faced near certain death– perhaps it was Loki’s turn to do the same. After all, this was not a moment of defeat. Loki had _planned_ to lose, so even in failure– Loki had _won_, and for that… he thought he deserved a moment of enjoyment, even if it was something so very small.

“If it’s all the same to you,” he said, catching Stark’s eye with a smirk. “I think I’ll have that drink, now.”

Even as all of the other Avengers tightened their grips on their weapons, Stark’s lips turned up slightly, even though something in his gaze remained pained.

And despite himself, Loki could not help but hold the image of that smile in his mind– almost as some kind of tribute to the fact that, even if no one else would know it, Loki had done something _good_ today.

On top of the failed invasion, Loki had made someone smile– and he knew that was more than simply a rare thing.

—

Loki did not understand why they had to go to such a public place to send him back to Asgard for his arrest. After all, it was not like they would be travelling through the Bifröst, so there was no worry of destroying the roof of a building.

Perhaps the Avengers wanted to laud their victory. Perhaps they merely wished to mock him even further, to press their boot down even harder over his head and squish him into the mud.

And, to make matters _worse_, they had placed a horrible muzzle over his mouth, as if they were afraid of his legendary silver tongue.

It was demeaning and embarrassing, and he stared them all down even to the last moment, even as Thor gave him one side of the Tesseract’s casing to hold. Loki may have been caught, but he hadn’t been _beaten_.

Then, just as they were about to leave—

“Wait,” Stark said, “Thor, stop!”

Thor actually did pause, looking to the mortal in confusion, and Loki almost groaned. He did not wish to delay the moment– whether he was for prison or for the executioner’s block, he just wanted to get the proceedings over with.

“I just need a moment before you go,” Stark told them. As he stepped closer, he pulled his sunglasses away from his eyes and placed them into the jacket pocket of his suit. “It won’t take long.”

“Of course,” Thor replied. “What do you need?”

“Actually...” Stark seemed to hesitate. “I wanted to talk to Loki.”

The words went through Loki like the icy blade of a knife, and he almost didn’t hear Thor’s warnings. But permission was granted for the conversation, and Thor removed Loki’s muzzle with a stern warning.

“If you harm him, Loki,” Thor said, “Then you shall only make things worse.”

“I am not entirely sure that it is _possible_ to make things worse in this moment,” Loki replied, and he enjoyed the look of concern that crossed Thor’s face before he moved to join the mortal. Had it been any of the other mortals, then Loki likely would have refused the conversation outright, but as it was… Stark had intrigued him. He didn’t look at Loki as an enemy– he looked at him as a puzzle to be solved, and in Loki’s opinion, that made Stark a puzzle in turn.

Thor and the other Avengers remained in sight, but Loki and Stark were at least granted the privacy of being out of earshot. Loki was surprised, though, that instead of staying a safe distance away from Loki and being, well, _sensible_, Stark positioned himself so that Loki was between him and the Avengers, so that Stark would be out of their line of vision. Then, without warning, he stepped close into Loki’s space and grabbed his chained wrists.

Loki was caught with such surprise at the movement that he froze, and his pause was enough time for Stark to push up the sleeve of Loki’s coat and stare at the mark on his wrist.

_No, I wanted to talk with you_.

“What?” Stark whispered, his fingers tightening, his expression going slack. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why did you do that?” Loki asked, yanking his wrist from Stark and cradling both his hands close to his chest.

“Because…” Stark groaned, and rubbed both his own hands over his face. As he did so, the long sleeves of his jacket pushed up slightly, and Loki could see the edge of an armband that covered the mortal’s wrist.

“Because?” Loki prompted, his voice suddenly feeling like it was stuck in the back of his throat– but that was ludicrous. He was letting the wish of a desperate child and random choice of words lift his spirit over something he thought he had given up on centuries ago, even though he knew that what Stark had said didn’t make a single difference.

Loki’s mark was _fake_. It did not matter that what Stark said almost matched– it would not have even mattered if it _had_. Loki’s mark was not real and they were not the first words that Stark had spoken to him – nor were they even spoken to him at all – so any hope would be doubly foolish.

But… after a lifetime of longing, Loki could not help it.

And when he heard Stark’s next words, his heart almost stopped entirely.

“Because I’m not often asked whether I’m appealing to anyone’s humanity,” Stark said, his voice soft. But then he tensed, his hands clenched into fists, and his glare turned down to the floor. “But the words on your wrist aren’t even in _English_, and I can’t… I thought, when I heard _you_ say it, and since they’re written in fucking Futhark… I thought that maybe there was a chance I had finally found you. But your mark doesn’t match.”

Stark sounded so anguished, so broken, and…

For the first time in his life, Loki actually considered telling someone the truth about the writing upon his wrist.

“Stark,” Loki said, his voice thick, his heart hammering so hard he would be surprised if Stark could not hear it. “These words on my wrist… they are not my mark.”

“What?” Stark gasped, his head snapping up with sudden urgency, confusion and sudden hope battling for dominance in his gaze. “What do you mean? How can it not be your mark, it’s on your wrist, it’s _written right there_—”

“It is an illusion,” Loki said. “A glamour that I placed there as a child, in order to hide the fact that I did not have a mark.”

“Do you have one now?” Stark asked immediately. “Under the illusion?”

Loki’s smile was tight, and he asked a different question. “How old are you, Stark?” Loki asked. “How many years have you lived?”

Stark’s eyes flashed with realisation even as he gave Loki the answer, and Loki only just managed to hear it through the rush in his ears.

The last time he had checked his wrist had been _centuries_ before Stark was born.

“Loki,” Stark said gently, clearly seeing the realisation, the _shock_ in Loki’s eyes. “I’d like to show you something.”

Loki was still reeling at even just the possibility, but he stared as Stark began to roll up his sleeve.

“Here,” said Stark, tearing off the armband and showing Loki his wrist. “I had to get it translated, when I was younger. My father didn’t want me to, because he said that having it in another language was a blessing– less chance of someone trying to fake it, you know? But I needed to know what it said.”

Loki felt a surge of anger at Stark’s words about his father, but he could not help but stare at the expanse of skin that Stark was showing him. And there, written in runes – but perfectly readable to Loki – were the words he had spoken as he walked across the balcony of Stark Tower.

_Please tell me you’re going to appeal to my humanity. _

“You see?” Stark asked quietly. “That’s you, isn’t it?”

Loki wanted to say _yes_, he wanted it with every fibre of his being. Because those runes looked exactly as if Loki had written them himself, and they were etched into Stark’s skin with all the truth of a soul bond.

But if Loki let himself believe this without looking, without _knowing _for sure that it was true—

If he thought that he had finally found his match only to realise once again that it was not real, then he knew there was a chance that he would finally crumble for good.

So, with a kind of determination that Loki didn’t ever think he would feel, he shifted the manacles and pushed up his sleeve once again. He knew the words there so well now that they almost felt like they were a part of him– but they were also a _lie._ And perhaps… perhaps, soulmate or not, it was time to let the lie go.

Drawing in a fortifying breath, Loki held his hand over those words and let his seiðr trickle under his skin, removing the centuries’ old enchantment. And when it was done, all Loki needed to do was lift his hand… but that was a harder task than it should have been. His hand felt heavy, like it was suddenly made of molten steel, and he found that he couldn’t move it.

“Loki,” Stark said, and Loki’s gaze flashed up to meet his. Stark’s smile was shining in his eyes, like he already knew what Loki was going to find. And when Stark spoke again, Loki found that somehow, he believed him. “It’s going to be okay.”

Loki didn’t look away from Stark as he let his hand fall– and it was only when Stark gasped at the sight that he finally allowed himself to look down at the wrist which he had spent so many hours contemplating.

And then, there it was, etched over his wrist in sharp Midgardian letters that he knew without a doubt would match the hand of the man opposite him.

_Make your move, Reindeer Games._

Loki couldn’t help himself– he reached out with trembling fingers and brushed them along the lettering. He stared at the wrist that he thought had been bare his entire life– at the words that must have been there now for decades, if only he had been brave enough to look.

“I have a soulmate,” Loki whispered, his words reverent, disbelieving, euphoric. “_You_ are my _soulmate_.”

“Yes,” Stark said, his own eyes on Loki’s wrist, his hand slightly raised as if he too wanted to run his hands over Loki’s mark– over his own words that were etched over Loki’s skin. Pushing away the remains of his nerves and allowing himself to swell with this strange feeling of elation, Loki moved both of his manacled hands closer to Stark in an obvious invitation– and then, smiling even brighter still, Stark offered Loki the same.

It was difficult with Loki’s hands still bound together, but there was enough space around the manacles for them to manage. Stark held his right hand to Loki’s left wrist and then placed his own left wrist under the fingers of Loki’s right, and as Loki stared down at their hands… even sight of the manacles and the knowledge of what was soon to come was not enough to take the happiness away from him.

“I am sorry that I didn’t know,” Loki whispered. “I wouldn’t…”

“What?” Stark asked, though not unkindly. “You wouldn’t have thrown me through that window?”

Of course, Loki had been sure that Stark would be able to save himself from the fall – he had seen the man’s suits of armour in action, after all – and besides, he had only meant to get Stark away from the tower and toward his team without a fight between them.

But he wasn’t sure how to put that answer into words, and before he could come up with a way to do so, Stark had already begun to speak again.

“When you first said those words, I thought that I was going to have a heart attack,” Stark said. “But then I realised– that even though that was the first time you spoke directly to me, it wasn’t the first time I spoke to _you._ So then I just thought that you didn’t want me, which, you know. Made sense, considering where we were.”

“It wasn’t my intention to cause harm,” Loki said earnestly.

“Well, you didn’t exactly do a very good job of proving that, Reindeer Games.”

There was that name again– but with a jolt Loki realised that it was not intended to be mocking. This time, the name was laced with affection– and Stark’s thumb ran over Loki’s wrist as if he knew what Loki was thinking.

“Tell me,” Stark said. “I’ll listen.”

They were both all too aware of the Avengers not far away, just waiting for Loki to try and bite Stark’s head off or something equally violent and nefarious. But Loki still explained as best he could in the short time that they had, letting Stark know about the larger threat that loomed over their heads, up high in space.

“You must make sure that your planet has better defences when he arrives,” Loki finished firmly. “You will not find him as easy to beat as you did me.”

“We only beat you because you _wanted_ us to,” Stark said, catching on even though that was something Loki had never explicitly stated.

“I do not particularly care for Midgard, but I do not wish to see it destroyed, either.” Loki didn’t mention that he didn’t wish for Midgard to be destroyed especially because it was Stark’s home. He had lived so long with a bare wrist– he did not think he could cope to see it wiped clean once again. But he didn’t know Stark, and Stark didn’t know him– at least, not yet. But even without the mark Loki had been able to see something within that mortal, and he knew that even if he never returned to Midgard, even if he never saw his soulmate again, that at least he had warned the right person to have a chance at stopping Thanos in his tracks.

But Stark seemed like he was focused on entirely the wrong thing.

“You’re going to prison for this,” Stark said. “You were only trying to survive, and you actually _helped_ us—”

“It is no less than I deserve,” Loki said. “I am a monster regardless of whether this attack was my idea.”

“You’re not a monster,” Stark said. “If you are, then I am as well, because I’ve also done things I’m not proud of to save my own skin.”

Loki appreciated the attempt, but… Stark could not understand. He didn’t even know what a Frost Giant was. And, _of course_, before Loki could formulate an answer, Stark was speaking once again. Honestly, did this mortal ever _stop?_

(Although, if Loki were being honest, he rather enjoyed it. It was a rare thing, to find a person this eager to talk to _him_.)

“No, you know what?” Stark was saying. “I think that you still have a lot of explaining to do, and we _both_ just need to have more time to talk. But we’re not going to be able to do that if you’re locked up in a cell on Asgard, and I am stuck here.”

Loki frowned, unsure of what Stark meant by that. But then he moved his hands to Loki’s manacles, and ran his fingers over the lock.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “This should work.”

“What are you doing?” Loki asked.

“Do you have a way of magicking yourself around or something?” Stark shot back. “Can you get out of here on your own?”

Theoretically, yes, Loki knew that he could. He would not have been able to skywalk the day before, when he was so drained from the Other’s final reminder to stay loyal and the trials of laying down his intricate plan. But, after a night sleeping relatively soundly in a cell—

“I can skywalk, but not far,” Loki said, his eyes widening as he realised what Stark was planning.

“Go back to my tower,” Stark said. “You know where that is. Go to the tower now, and I’ll…” Stark pulled a device from his pocket – a phone, Loki believed they were called – and tapped something into it before shoving it away again. “There, JARVIS won’t hurt you, and he won’t tell anyone where you are. I’m going to try and explain what happened, so that they’ll leave us alone. And then, we can talk properly, okay?”

Loki thought that sounded more than okay– save for one rather significant detail.

“Thor will not believe you,” Loki said. “He believes the other words on my wrist were true. He has seen them.”

“Don’t worry about Thor,” Stark said. “I’ll _make_ him believe me. For now, you’ve got more important things to worry about.”

With that, Stark pulled another device from another pocket– and Loki couldn’t help but wonder whether Stark had arrived anticipating that this would occur. The device made short work of picking the locks on Loki’s manacles, but Stark held them still around Loki’s wrist for a moment.

“Thank you, Stark,” Loki said. “I won’t make you regret this.”

“I know,” Stark said, his smile bright and his fingers soft on Loki’s skin. “And, please. Call me Tony?”

“Tony.” The name felt nice on his tongue, and he matched Tony’s happy smile.

Then Loki’s manacles fell to the ground, and Loki immediately began to gather his seiðr. He had the almost overwhelming urge to bring Tony with him, but he forced himself to resist. Tony was right– someone needed to explain to the Avengers, and if Loki skywalked with Tony now the mortals would only assume the worst. So when Loki left, he did so by himself– but he took with him the knowledge that no matter what came next, he would not have to face it alone.

And that was a gift far more precious than any that he could have hoped for.


End file.
